This Week on Perl 6 (3 -9 Mar 2002)

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Perl 6 is the major redesign and rewrite of the Perl language. Parrot is
the virtual machine that Perl 6 (and other languages) will be written for.
For more information on the Perl 6 and Parrot development efforts, visit
dev.perl.org and
parrotcode.org.

Last week was extremely light, with just 70 messages across 34 threads, and 29
authors contributing.

Uri Guttman
cross-posted a thread discussing redesigning
printf. Since
% will now be used for all hash accesses, there's a potential ambiguity between
interpolating a hash key, and a format specifier. Several solutions were
presented, including requiring
$() for interpolation, a new quote operator, and replacing the
% with something else. The discussion continues.

The latest version of Parrot is being wrapped up. The big feature of this release
is the foundation of the garbage collector. A formal release announcement
will be made, well, when this version is formally released.

Michael Lambert
asked whether Parrot itself should support multimethod dispatch. Internals head Dan
Sugalski affirmed that it
would, but only for method and subroutine dispatch. (As with most design decisions,
it's a speed thing.)

Alex Gough is a physics student at Oxford with interests ranging from quantum computing
to DNA simulation. He uses perl to do more in less time and hopes Parrot and
Perl 6 will allow cheaper, shorter, one-line solutions to troublesome but
otherwise irrelevant problems. He works on the big number and testing
framework of Parrot.

When not at his computer, Alex canoes on foamy rivers, teaches basic
lifeguarding, and helps mentally disabled children exercise.